Dell has just announced a pair of external SSDs. The Dell SDI T0500 will have a 500 GB capacity. The Dell SDI T1000 will, as the name suggests, doubles that to 1 TB. Both external SSDs connect via Thunderbolt 3. Because it’s using this connector, we can expect it to be fast but not mass-market. I am guessing that Dell intends this product to be purchased with one of their Thunderbolt 3 laptops, and probably with a specific type of user in mind. That is just my speculation, though.
Unfortunately, we don’t have much else to go on. No price, availability, read or write speeds, IO throughput, or anything else has been published.
Now we must have some proper
Now we must have some proper analysis of laptops and their support of the New TB3 controllers with an emphasis on those PCIe lanes that laptop OEM may/may not have made available. This is so the TB3 controllers are not starved for bandwidth as each TB3 controller is going to need at least a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection or that 40Gb/s may not be doable.
Intel’s new Titan Ridge(1) Thunderbolt controllers need a looksee and Laptop OEMs need to inform potential customers of just how many PCIe lanes are connected to those new TB3 controllers, older ones also, especially the dual TB3 controller variants if made use of inside of laptops because any Dual TB3 controllers will need to be hanging off of the appropriate number of OEM provided PCIe 3.0 lanes.
Laptops can not get PCIe 4.0 ability soon enough and laptops should be the market that gets PCIe 4.0 first. The the Desktop SKUs get plenty of PCIe 3.0 lanes whereas laptops never get enough PCIe lanes to begin with and TB3 is really not TB3 on some laptops SKUs for the lack of enough PCIe 3.0 lanes running into the TB3 controller complex.
(1)
“Intel Releases “Titan Ridge” Thunderbolt 3 Controllers: Adds DisplayPort 1.4 Support & USB-C Host Compatibility”
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12228/intel-titan-ridge-thunderbolt-3